In every prefecture in Japan there is at least one pilot school doing a 3 year research project into Elementary School English. And today we were invited to the Shizuoka school, located right at the base of Mt Fuji. But it was cloudy so we couldn’t see the mountain. First off we did a show for the kids and they were great. If anything they were a bit too hyper, which was no problem. In the shows I always try and balance up really Genki bits with really quiet bits, but with these kids it was a case of forgetting the quiet stuff and just going full on with the genki stuff! Then the teachers seminar and it was great. From April all the schools in town have to teach English so we had 50 teachers from most of the schools and they were really, really good. Many of the pilot schools often use experimental techniques and in many of the places this doesn’t really work (for example in one prefecture kids weren’t allowed to speak till 4th grade!). but here they’ve been using Genki English, have a great ALT and teacher in charge and the kids are cool. And hopefully we’ll be back to do a full length training seminar soon.